Ernest Renan 1823 – 1892

Joseph Ernest Renan was a French Semitic philologist, historian, and philosopher of religion and one of the most influential and controversial public intellectuals of nineteenth-century France. After abandoning seminary studies for academic philology, he produced his Life of Jesus in 1863, presenting Christ as a charismatic Galilean teacher stripped of supernatural elements, and provoking one of the great religious controversies of the century. His Future of Science, his celebrated lecture What Is a Nation?, and his many studies of the history of Israel and early Christianity shaped late nineteenth-century European thought on religion, science, and nationality.